Joy Banks

There once was a chubby, blonde baby born in Georgia. Before the Southern lilt could shape her speech, she hopped on a plane with her family to live out her childhood on the snowy, northern island of Hokkaido, Japan. Many years later, she discovered another city that shared the same Pacific Ocean and also had snowy peaks with tall evergreens, just like her beloved Hokkaido.  The city also had a seminary where she could study, not knowing at the time that she would one day become a pastor. In that Pacific city she discovered a little blue church that was starting up some intentional community houses of hospitality and welcome. She asked to join in. That was back in 1999, and ever since, she’s pretty much been living in that same square block of the city, worshipping in that little blue church, being shaped by the joys and challenges of shared life with people from all kinds of backgrounds, discovering that a life of community work and justice is unsustainable without a deep life of prayer, inspired by being part of a community who genuinely seeks to live out the upside down story of Jesus in creative ways. She started off working as a community worker and chaplain with various neighbourhood initiatives that started in the little church, and gradually over time moved more and more into pastoral work. Now she serves as the Morning Congregation Pastor and is passionate about facilitating personal, communal, and societal transformation through Christ. Oh, and she loves to make art for that purpose, too.